Leaks in the Bulkhead
For the salvors the worst had passed, but for the prisoners the worst had yet to come. Fourteen more hours of suffering had to be endured before the rescue was completed, and they were hours more full of perils than those which had passed. The devils of the sea were not willing to yield their prey to the efforts of man. One of these perils was the old haunting threat of chlorine gas intensified. Of the others I will tell in their place. When the control room was opened up to the outer air by the tube which had been fitted the pressure within fell to the normal. It had been raised when the submarine sank by the intrusion of hundreds of tons of water into the enclosed space of the hull. But the pressure in the flooded compartments and upon the bulkhead, which alone stood between the survivors and death by drowning, remained at thirty-one pounds to the square inch. The leaks in this bulkhead at once increased and the water gushed through in greater volume. It looked as if the means which had saved the men from a slow death from suffocation would hand them over to a quick death from poison gas.
“If the salt water had reached the powerful batteries it must have been decomposed into its constituents and given off gas in deadly volumes. The expedient was adopted of pumping the incoming water into the bilge, but this could not continue indefinitely. Time was now an even more urgent factor in the rescue than it had been during the previous two days. This was fully understood by the salvors, who furiously yet with orderly precision redoubled their efforts. It was decided not to attempt the removal of the men one by one through Fairfields’s big steel tube which had been made to fit over the torpedo hatch. The method was too uncertain and, even if feasible, too slow. Instead of risking all upon this doubtful means of egress, Barttelot determined to throw all the energies of his plant and staff into raising the bows of K-13 above the water and cutting a hole through her double skin. The Ranger was on the way and would soon arrive; what he could not do without her would become comparatively easy with her powerful assistance.